Can anyone shed any light on why female college students are referred to as coeds, but guys are just…guys. I thought that COED stood for coeducational, as in, both men and women study at the same institute. If this is the case, than why is it that women somehow adopted the nickname that quickens men’s pulses worldwide, while men have never been called anything but men. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer in this arena.
Many colleges that are today co-educational started out as men’s colleges. It was the addition of females that made them co-educational, and thus those females were dubbed “coeds”. The name must have spread to mean any woman student at a co-educational college or university, since I came across the term in old (1930’s and 40’s) college newspapers at the University of Minnesota, which has always been co-educational.
Have women at women’s colleges ever been called “coeds”? That would be strange.
IMO, the term is quite outdated. I doubt you’d see a reference to “coeds” in the U of M newspaper today. Perhaps people are finally used to women on a college campus :).
I spent a year on the campus of the infamous Sarah Lawrence College. I’m here to tell you, there was PRECIOUS little talk of “coeds” there.
Cartooniverse
I nearly applied to Sarah Lawrence (before the tuition prices and entrance requirements hit my reality), and I’m curious to know, what’s infamous about it?
Well, Sarah Lawrence was a women-only institution for quite a long time until they decided to start accepting men back in the late 60s. I used to work with a guy who was one of the first male students there. You’d think that being one of a handful of men on a campus full of young women would be quite advantageous to his sex life; according to him, that wasn’t the case.
Cartooniverse’s comment probably refers to Sarah Lawrence’s reputation as being filled with radical feminists, lesbians, and other extreme liberals.